Native Alienation

This week's review looks at the violence of California's Spanish missions against Indigenous peoples, its long-lasting impact, and Native resistance to subjugation.

Posted on November 10, 2025 in Reviews of the Month

Native Alienation: Spiritual Conquest and the Violence of California Missions

Sepulveda, Charles A. Washington, 2024
212p bibl index, 9780295753270 $110.00, 9780295753270 $30.00, 9780295753287

Native Alienation powerfully critiques romanticized narratives regarding California’s Spanish missions. Sepulveda (Univ. of California, Riverside), a Tongva and Acjachemen scholar, reframes the mission system as a site of violence, forced spiritual conversion, and Indigenous enslavement. Highlighting incidents of Indigenous resistance and the long-term consequences of missionization, he then conjures seemingly idyllic patterns of Indigenous benevolence and intent. While the book’s strength lies in its decolonial perspective, centering Native voices and histories often absent from mainstream accounts, it minimizes Indigenous violence while highlighting select institutional abuses. It broadens the discussion beyond traditional historiographies by considering the gendered dimensions of colonization. In seeking to dismantle the notion that the missions were merely sites of benign evangelization and acculturation, Sepulveda instead essentializes them, thereby reducing them to mechanisms of genocide and dispossession. While the book is a crucial intervention in California history, its uncompromising stance may challenge readers who are accustomed to more conventional, measured, and deliberative assessments. However, its rigor, readability, and use of Indigenous scholarship make it an essential read for those interested in Native resistance, settler colonialism, and revisionist storytelling.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty.
Reviewer: R. G. Mendoza, emeritus, California State University, Monterey Bay
Interdisciplinary Subjects: Native American Studies
Subject: Social & Behavioral Sciences – History, Geography & Area Studies – North America
Choice Issue: Aug 2025

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Native Alienation

This week's review looks at the violence of California's Spanish missions against Indigenous peoples, its long-lasting impact, and Native resistance to subjugation.